Subscriber to monster roles, the Spaniard Javier Botet embodies in “The Last Voyage of Demeter” (in cinemas since August 23) the most famous of vampires. A look back at the career of this actor with an atypical physique.
If you like horror movies, you’ve probably seen him on screen and didn’t know who he was. Hidden behind impressive special effects make-up, comedian Javier Botet has made monsters his specialty.
Originally from Ciudad Real in Spain, he was only five years old when he was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome, a genetic disease that affects connective tissues. Common symptoms include abnormally long arms and fingers, hyperlaxity (excess elasticity) of the joints, and heart and lung problems. It is this disease that gives Javier Botet this particular silhouette: the actor is over 2m tall for around fifty kilos and has particularly long upper limbs.
He will make this singularity a strength and find a place for himself in Spanish genre cinema, which calls on him to embody all kinds of monsters. After his film debut in 2005 in The Curse of the Depths, he lends his features to the terrifying Niña Medeiros in [REC], the found footage by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza in which a journalist and her cameraman are stuck in a building infested with zombies. Botet will reprise this role, which is one of the most defining creatures of horror cinema of the 2000s, in the third installment of the franchise, [REC]³ Genesis.
As well solicited by television as by the cinema, he connects the appearances in short and feature films. If it is also illustrated in dramas and comedies (which have remained for the most part unpublished in France), it remains inseparable from fantastic and horrifying cinema. He toured several times under the direction of his compatriot Álex de la Iglesia (Balada Triste, Un jour de chance, Les Sorcières de Zugarramurdi) and ended up being spotted by Hollywood.
“Another memory of Crimson Peak with the boss. ✨GUILLERMO DEL TORO✨”
In 2013, he starred in Mama opposite Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Javier Botet embodies an evil spirit particularly attached to his family. He reunited with Andy Muschietti for the diptych It, taken from Stephen King’s novel. A great lover of monsters, Guillermo del Toro offered him a ghost role in his gothic film Crimson Peak (2015) and in his production Scary Stories (2019).
The Spanish actor continues to make his way across the Atlantic by playing The Crooked Man (literally “the crooked man”) in Conjuring 2: the Enfield case; Set, Ahmanet’s lover in The Mummy with Tom Cruise; KeyFace in Insidious: The Last Key; and the title role of Slender Man, based on a famous creepypasta. Many images of his impressive transformations can be seen on his Instagram account (@jbotet).
Despite his filmography, Javier Botet had never played Dracula. This is now done with The Last Voyage of Demeter: “I’ve been playing monsters for 15 years and I’ve been asked several times which of the classic monsters I still dream of playing, to which I always answered Dracula.”
André Øvredal’s film focuses on the transport of the vampire from his native land, the Carpathians, to England. The count boards the Demeter, a ship on which he has loaded a dozen wooden boxes filled with black earth, including one in which he hides. It is in chapter VII of the famous novel by Bram Stoker that the last crossing of the Demeter is mentioned, in an extract from the English daily Dailygraph dated August 8, 1897.
For the needs of the film, Botet shaved his head and spent between 3 and 5 hours a day in the hands of special make-up manager Göran Lundström and his team. Silicone prostheses were attached to his head first, then he had to slip into a latex suit.
A heavy preparation which did not dampen the enthusiasm of the actor, very proud of this project, as he wrote on instagram : “I couldn’t be more proud and happy to have come this far. Without a doubt one of the most important moments of my professional life. An honor to bring this icon of cinema to life, an honor to do so for Amblin, an honor to work with the artists and professionals with whom I embarked on “The Last Voyage of Demeter”. Thank you André Øvredal. I hope that movie lovers, and in particular horror lovers, the will appreciate.”
Javier Botet as Dracula in The Last Voyage of Demeter, currently in theaters: